On The Edge 'Dark Souls 2' Article And Its Foreboding Forecast

Why Dark Souls fans shouldn't worry about the sequel until we have more information.

This is the internet and one thing you must remember about the internet is that the denizens of this digital empire are prone to worry and outrage in direct proportion to the lack of solid information on any given topic.

So the less we know about something we care deeply about, the more likely we are to freak out about it. Enter Dark Souls 2 and its scraps of images and information, and watch as the internet does its thing.

Edge has recently given us a glimpse of Dark Souls 2 (for subscribers only at this point) and the details in the piece paint a somewhat foreboding portrait of the next fantasy RPG from the team at From Software and Namco Bandai.

Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura are heading up the project. Both are FromSoft veterans, but neither are former lead designer Hidetaka Miyazaki, the series' creator, and players are justifiably worried that new leadership means new direction and that change could destroy many things they love about the game. Change isn't always good, but it's not always a bad thing, either---for instance, the Souls games are spiritual successors to the King's Field franchise, but I'm glad they made the drastic leap from first-person to third-person in the more recent games.

Still, change is always cause for concern.

Also cause for concern is the suggestion in the article that Namco Bandai and From Software made the decision to move Miyazaki off the project in order to bring fresh perspective to the sequel and make it more accessible to a broader audience. I'll temper that concern just a bit: Miyazaki is working on another secret project while Dark Souls 2 is being developed, and is hush-hush on whether it's a new IP.

Could there be a Demon's Souls 2 in the works? Or perhaps a revival of Shadow Tower or King's Field? Or is this an all-new IP?

We don't know, and we also don't know how much his involvement in this enigmatic has figured into the decision to place him outside the day-to-day operations on Dark Souls 2.

Fans of the series will also worry about statements made by Shibuya who has said that he wants to make the game more accessible and straightforward by "limiting players options for the early portion of the game, making it simpler to understand new concepts. Then, after a certain amount of time has elapsed, they will suddenly experience the true Dark Souls experience".

This actually doesn't bother me at all, as an extended introductory tutorial section of the game would certainly be helpful to many players and would not diminish the game for veterans of the series.

Demon's Souls had a better intro than Dark Souls and made it much easier to grasp the mechanics early on. Indeed, other than World Tendency, I think Demon's Souls did a better job communicating information to players than Dark Souls, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of that in Dark Souls 2.

You could also limit invasions for the very first portion of the game, and give players a bit more context about what they were getting into.

"I intend to make it more accessible to players," Shibuya also said. "And that's not just with the Covenant system, but with a lot of other aspects that I feel were difficult to adapt to. I will follow the same concept as Dark Souls, but there were a lot of hidden story elements that some players may not have caught before, and I'm hoping to make some of that a little bit more clear or directly expressed."

Plenty of players will freak out over this, but I'm still feeling pretty okay with everything Shibuya has said so far, which really isn't very much. For instance, he says he will follow the same concept as Dark Souls, but make some of the hidden parts more obvious. I imagine he wants to make the primary narrative more obvious, but he also says that there will be other elements to the story that are more inscrutable and secret.

A Dark Souls game with a more coherent main story wouldn't break the game so long as a great deal of mystery and hidden lore remained and so long as much of the backstory and world-building was still conveyed through item descriptions, brief NPC conversations, and so forth. There can be more of a balance here, and I think Demon's Souls proves this assertion, as its main story was much more straightforward than that of Dark Souls (in my opinion, anyways.)

Meanwhile, better graphics and server hosted (rather than P2P) multiplayer are both exciting tidbits, and the Edge piece doesn't hold back at all when gushing about the game's graphical fidelity. They witnessed ten minutes of the game played on a high-end gaming laptop and said it looked very next-gen, though there's no word on whether the game will be out on next generation hardware or not. The concept art they include with the article is also top notch, and looks very, very much like a Souls game.

Shibuya also mentions bringing his history with other From action titles to the game. While I would be happy if they didn't change the combat formula at all (and I sincerely doubt they change it much, as Shibuya says he won't change the controls) I could see much better boss fights being an important change, as well as smarter AI. As hard as the game can be, the AI isn't the brightest out there.

There's even more room for improvement in the boss fights since slashing at a Golem's feet is pretty uninspiring if you ask me. The improvements to boss fights in the DLC was pretty drastic, I'd argue, and I hope they continue making those improvements in Dark Souls 2.

Other interesting tidbits from the article: it's a direct sequel to Dark Souls but there's no details on whether that simply means that it takes place in the same broad mythology or whether it means it takes place directly after the other game. It won't take place in Lordran, though I'm still not sure whether that means the above screenshot is a glimpse at Anor Londo from a distance or not. And they'll be making use of the ocean and the seaside and are considering vehicles such as chariots.

To make a long story short, I remain pretty sanguine about what little information we have so far.

That the most controversial quotations and information have drifted to the surface of discussion is neither surprising nor necessarily a particularly sturdy case against the sequel. We're very quick to judge a game based on its announcement trailer alone, and quicker still to latch on to every quotation and assume the worst. Many gamers have been badly burned by sequels in the past, but for my part I really do have a lot of faith in From Software. They've given me two of my favorite games of all time and I want to see them continue to innovate and tinker with the formula.

I'm glad they made many of the changes they did between Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, and I suspect many of the changes coming in the sequel will also be very welcome.

Some may not agree, and I could very easily be wrong, but I prefer to go forward with hope and optimism. This is a developer who has not let me down. At least not yet. If I am wrong, I'll be sure to say as much. This is a great game, and I truly do hope the people making its sequel realize why. I can only imagine the hue and cry from the game's fans if the sequel is broken, and from reviewers like your humble narrator.

Finally, the game has been in the works since the team began work on the DLC, and at the current development pace will likely not be released until 2014. That From is not rushing out a sequel should be comforting news, even if other information so far has put a damper on spirits---no more so than the departure of Miyazaki.